‘Anonymous OS Live’ Released, The Hacktivist Group Denies Any Links

According to the reports floating on the web, an ‘Anonymous OS Live’ has been released. The OS is Ubuntu-based and has been released on Sourceforge. The description says that it uses Ubuntu 11.10 and has MATE desktop. A number of well-known Anonymous sources have categorically stated that they have no affiliation with the released OS and have rather warned that it may be some nefarious software.

The suspicions of the actual Anonymous hackers are well-placed since FBI has been hard on the group of late, having infiltrated it deep and arrested a number of countries from many countries. So, this software, if not by genuine Anonymous members, can be a nefarious software that may be used to infiltrate the machines of real Anonymous hackers.

The OS features a number of hacking tools and packages which, the description says, can be used to test the security of different web pages and for other educational purposes. The packages that come with it include Find Host IP, Anonymous HOIC, Sqlmap, Parolapass Password Generator, John The Ripper, Admin Finder and different other Linux packages.

So far, the OS has been downloaded 37,000 times despite the warning from Anonymous members. These 37k download are accompanied with 43 recommendations and 38 dislikes.

One of the chief Twitter accounts of Anonymous, which has been fairly accurate about its reports regarding the group and thus, is considered pretty authentic, tweeted about it, “seeing lots of news about just-released purported ‘Anonymous OS.’ BE CAREFUL! Remember the Zeus Trojan incident w/Slowloris recently!” Another Anonymous-related website responded in the following terms, “download Anonymous-OS 0.1? Hell no, stay away from it! Download Backtrack 5 R2 instead, if you really want to test the security of web sites.”

However, the developers who have released the Anonymous OS Live are of the opinion that they have offered a genuinely useful piece of software that the world should make use of. According to them, “please people, in our world, in Linux and opensource world, there is no virus.” And, “If any user believes that Anonymous-OS is wrapped in trojans or backdoored OS by any Law enforcement Company or Hacker please don’t download it! But don’t mislead the world that Linux is dangerous and has trojans!”

Update: The project has been taken off by Sourceforge admin due to the security risks posed by it, as ascertained by different security experts.